Will Errol Oh be the catalyst for press freedom in Malaysia?

We saw a necessity to have this blog, because we could see what is happening in the area of Corporate Governance very clearly, and yet we were also alarmed with the total lack of debate in the mainstream media about some of the questions we have raised here.

Please do not miss the point of the raison d'etre for this blog, which is to question first and foremost the Chairman of the Securities Commission, Tan Sri Zarinah Anwar, on why she allowed the registration of a Big Four firm, namely PricewaterhouseCoopers, under the nascent Audit Oversight Board, on the 1st of April, 2010, even though that registration is both a physical and a legal impossibility, and is an affront to the principles and logic of having an Oversight Board for Auditors in the first place.

Has the mainstream media questioned Tan Sri Zarinah on the scandalous registration of PricewaterhouseCoopers by the the AOB under her watch?

To summarise the chronology of the registration of PwC by the AOB; the AOB, and its Board Members who were themselves only appointed on the 1st of April, 2010, also managed to do all the checks with the relevant regulatory bodies, something the AOB itself says will take up to two weeks, as well as collect the fees for the registration, which was only signed as law fifteen days later, on their very first day of operations when the Firm to be registered was PricewaterhouseCoopers in Malaysia!

This Regulation was to come into effect on the 15th of April 2010, so how is it possible for the AOB to register a Big Four firm which does the audits for a hundred Bursa listed Companies a full two weeks prior to that?

In light of the above, should we not expect that the mainstream media will have by now asked the same questions that we ask here?

Does it not seem reasonable to have this blog asking the questions, when no one has questioned what transpired at the dinner in Tan Sri Zarinah's home, when the MD of PricewaterhouseCoopers, Mr Chin Kwai Fatt dined there along with the future Director of the AOB, Mr Manohar Benjamin Johnson, who was an Executive Director at PricewaterhouseCoopers at that time?

Does it not seem reasonable to have this blog asking the questions, when we see that the Executive Chairman of PricewaterhouseCoopers, Dato' Johan Raslan, who is also a member of the Securities Commission of Malaysia's Corporate Governance Consultative Committee, is not asked a thing when the rules are bent past the breaking point to get his firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers registered by the only Oversight Body in this country that can scrutinize it with a fine tooth comb?

How can Tan Sri Zarinah Anwar get away with something as indefensible like this? How can PricewaterhouseCoopers get away with even more that that?

If this was to happen in Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan or Australia, Tan Sri Zarinah would have resigned by now. The fact is that the Press cannot report on the AOB or question the actions of the Chairman of the SC in Malaysia, that is the true measure of the Press Freedom that we have allowed ourselves.

Perhaps Mr Errol Oh can try calling this number +60 (3) 2173 1188, which will take one to the office of PricewaterhouseCoopers in Malaysia, and ask either Chin Kwai Fatt or Johan Raslan to deny or reply to any of the allegations here, and tell us what he gets?

Will the press call Chin Kwai Fatt and Johan Raslan?

As far as we are concerned, we are asking the questions which the mainstream media does not ask of the SC and the AOB; and asking PricewaterhouseCoopers to answer the questions which the AOB in return, does not ask of them.

And now we ask the press to regain some measure of Press Freedom on behalf of themselves, the people and the nation and make this blog totally redundant.